5 Google Business Profile (GBP) Optimizations to Boost Your Small Business Website's Rankings
Claiming and optimizing your Google Business Profile (GBP), formerly Google My Business (GMB), is an excellent, free way to increase your small business’ visibility on search engines. A fully optimized GBP allows prospects to quickly find, learn about, and engage with your small business. Of course, you should ensure that your company’s basic information like name, hours, address, phone, website, and attributes are populated with accurate information. Once that’s done, you should then apply these five Google Business Profile optimizations to boost your small business search engine rankings!
1. Add Quality Photos and Videos
Adding high-quality photos to your Google Business Profile helps to showcase your small business as authentic and active, and keeps your target audience engaged, increasing your search engine rankings. Research by Google shows that customers are more likely to click on a website or request driving directions from businesses with photos.
If your photos are not published upon upload, check out our guide on how to fix the photos not approved issue.
Additionally, you can upload videos to your Google Business Profile. In 2022, Google gave more visual real estate for videos on mobile devices where uploaded videos will automatically play (with no sound) within the search engine results, yielding a new way to capture searchers’ attention visually.
2. Encourage and Respond to Reviews
A business with multiple reviews, solid overall star ratings, and public review responses from management is more likely to earn higher rankings on search engines. Ask your customers to write a review about your business and the products or services they have purchased or used. Promptly responding to these reviews can help prospects with similar needs make informed decisions, answer commonly asked questions, and improve your local search engine optimization (SEO).
3. Regularly Post to Your Google Business Profile
Similar to social media platforms, you can post to your Google Business Profile to inform current and prospective customers about your small business’ offers, upcoming events, your products, and more. Posting regularly to your GBP can help to influence consumers to take action and visit your website, indirectly boosting traffic and your search engine rankings in the process.
4. Ask and Answer Questions
Since anyone can ask and answer questions on Google, it is crucial to optimize the question-and-answer section on your GBP to prevent inaccurate information. Ensure that you respond to any customer questions on your listing promptly. Additionally, you can seed, or pre-populate, your questions and answer section if desired. Include relevant keywords and accurate information when updating your Q&A section to help highlight your best features and increase your visibility.
Note that pre-populating your questions does not violate any Google terms of use at the time of writing this article.
5. Add Products and Services
Listing your products and services on your Google Business Profile can help ensure your small business appears on related searches. Google has created dedicated sections of your listing for products and/or services. For every product or service, fill out every applicable field available including name, photo, brief description, category, button with link, and price.
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